


Eclipsed

by nibling (twistedsisters)



Series: Lunar Chillterlude [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Lucretia Week 2k17, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 00:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11932398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsisters/pseuds/nibling
Summary: You lied to Merle. Not that it mattered - you would have lied to anyone about Maureen.--Sequel (Prequel?) to Lunar Chillterlude.





	Eclipsed

**Author's Note:**

> I started working on this right after Lunar Chillterlude was posted and then lost all motivation to work on it. Now that Lucretia Week is here I decided to finish it!  
> (Reading Lunar Chillterlude may help you understand the first bookend, but won't be that important to understanding the actual plot of the fic.)

_You hadn’t been entirely honest with Merle. Your duties often required you to lie, frequently by omission: you would dance around the truth, give only half of it, part the curtain just a fraction of the way. It was what was necessary. This had been a silly thing to half-lie about, considering all the other things you had to conceal. It had been sticking strictly to the question he’d asked, but it had been a part-truth nonetheless._

_You’d been thinking that you’d smoked last directly before you’d gone into Wonderland. You hadn’t told him that, of course, but it had impacted the way you’d answered. And that had been true - the last time you’d smoked was laying in a clearing just outside the Felicity Wilds, heart hammering in your chest each time a branch had snapped or a deer had run by, determined to win and terrified of losing. Merle, of course, had meant the last time you’d gotten high period, regardless of his phrasing._ That _answer was a little different._

_You never would have told him anyway. Not even if he’d been the old Merle. The Merle that had traveled on the Starblaster with you. You may smoke with him, you may get drunk in a mud bath with him, you may have discussions about spirituality and aging and existence-threatening artifacts - but. That memory, that moment was something you’d never share with another living soul._

_The relics have worth in their power, in their potential, in the lives laid down in the wars to attain them. The Bureau itself, as a whole or broken down to its components, has worth in its mission, in the belief of its members, in the vision you all share. Your bonds, your memories, your quest, mean the world to you. They give you drive. They fuel you. Maureen - despite it all, even after all this time - has trumped them all._

\--

You didn’t tell Maureen about you - about the truth of you - until you’d known each other for a little over a year and a half. At first, it had just been because you simply didn’t know her well enough. At that point, you doubted whether you’d ever trust anyone enough to tell them about what had happened to you in Wonderland, let alone the rest. The Bureau was in its fledgling stages, and you simply couldn’t see the use in telling anyone about your failures, your betrayal. Why tarnish your reputation? What good would come from weakening your authority? As you spent more and more time with Maureen, though, the lie became about more than your position of power. It became equal parts shame and fear. Shame because telling her would mean admitting that you had, in no uncertain or polite terms, fucked up royally, and you wanted her to think highly of you. Fear because you had no idea how she would react. You knew she would keep the secret if you asked, but - well. You were older now, her equal in physical age, but before… You’d been so much _younger_. Foolhardy and arrogant and thoughtless. You’d been so sure of yourself and that suredness had hurt people - people you loved, and badly. You worried she might think those things of you now, though you liked to think they weren’t true anymore. You’d never known Maureen to be judgmental, but you couldn’t help but worry that the truth about your past and your impact on this world might change her opinion of you irrevocably.

Still. The closer you became it the more difficult it was not to tell her, even through the fear. She was extremely open - with her emotions, her thoughts, her secrets - and the guilt of being so closed off from her wore on you. It wasn’t an equal relationship. You weren’t on equal footing with any of your employees, of course, but this was different, in no small part because you wanted for it to be. Desperately. After months of working together, of, eventually, seeing each other outside of work, of developing inside jokes and learning each other’s movements and tics and reactions, the guilt and the want won out over the fear. You decided to tell her on the midsummer solstice, when everyone would be preoccupied with the eclipse and, in all likelihood, too drunk to notice where the two of you were.

And being drunk yourself probably wouldn’t hurt.

\--

The night of the solstice, Maureen wasn’t difficult to find, despite the throngs of people flooding the courtyard: she was with Lucas, giving out special eclipse glasses - a Miller family original - to passing Bureau members. You take a pair from her, heart thumping already, and nod your head towards your office’s dome. “May I borrow you for a moment? If you aren’t too busy, of course.”

Maureen laughed and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “Well, we’re not exactly perfecting nuclear fission,” she said, smiling. “Lucas, you can handle this, right?”  
Lucas made some non-committal noise, his eyes fixed on a nearby funnel cake booth. “He’ll be fine,” Maureen stage whispered to you. She came out from behind their folding card table (decorated with little papier mache moons and suns) and offered you her elbow. “Shall we?”

You laughed a little, nervously, and leaned down to take it. This proved a little difficult - Maureen was a full five inches shorter than you - but it felt right, to be walking arm in arm with her, even as ridiculous as you must have looked.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, once you were out of range of most of the revellers, nearing the dome. “Nothing’s wrong with the base, is it? A relic?”

“Oh! No, nothing like that at all. I was - I just -” you realized in that moment that, stupidly, you hadn’t planned for this moment at all. You’d planned on asking for a moment of her time, and then telling her, and everything in between that - well. Hadn’t occurred to you at all. _Fantastic. Yet another thing you jumped into._ “I… don’t care for crowds,” you finished.

To your great relief, Maureen smiled at that. “Neither do I, in truth. That’s why I’m locked away in the lab most of the time.” She bumped her hip against your thigh as the doors to the dome slid open to allow you entrance. “Who needs ‘em anyway? We earned a break after this year.”

You smiled, heart and stomach doing synchronized flips and dives. “Right.”

“We can party on our own.” She winked up at you.

You stopped in the foyer. “Did you… have something in mind?”  
She smiled slyly up at you and, for a brief moment, the clamor in your chest stopped. “Well. I may or may not have done some tweaking on a certain recipe from my university days. And I may or may not have prepared some for this special occasion.” She reached into the leather pack by her waist and pulled out a small cloth pouch, opening it to reveal several small, crushed looking brownies that reeked of pot. “I wouldn’t mind sharing,” she said sweetly.

You stared at her. You’d planned on wine, could feel the little vial of Junior’s ichor in your pocket, so weighty it could almost tear through the seams. You’d had a _plan_ -

“We don’t have to,” Maureen said, cheeks red, closing the pouch back up, stifling the smell almost entirely. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have - “

“No,” you said. Even then, you were powerless to resist her. “No. I want to.”

A smile spread across Maureen’s face. “Really?”

“Absolutely. Let’s - well. I guess it’s not really blazing.”

“Let’s munch,” Maureen said, grinning.

“Munch,” you agreed, and when she offered you her elbow again, you took it.

\--

There was a serious lack of comfortable furniture in your office, so the two of you settled into an abandoned employee lounge, you spread out on a couch and Maureen in one armchair with her feet on another. After hearing how long it had been since you’d last partaken, she cautioned you strictly only to eat two - JUST. TWO. - before handing you the pouch, popping hers in her mouth. The two of you sat, waiting for the effects to kick in, chatting about day to day Bureau activity, listening to the crowd shouting outside. It didn’t take long. About twenty minutes after you’d eaten them, you felt a slow, honey-thick stupor settle into your limbs. You turned your head for what felt like ten minutes to look at Maureen, who seemed to be in a similar state.

“I was under the impression... that edibles... take _hours._ To kick in.”

Maureen hummed and closed her eyes, sinking low into her armchairs. “They do. Usually. And that sucks. Which is why I specifically engineered these to be _good_.”

Your eyes crinkled up and you laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it. “You specially modified the concept of edibles to be ‘good’? How very… _scientific_ of you.”

She frowned and slumped over the armrest, counting off on one hand. “Special strains. Special extraction methods. Special oven.” She propped herself up on her elbows to smugly squint over at you. “It _is_ science.”

That really got you going; you burst into laughter at the ridiculous face she was making - her eyes mostly closed, her nose screwed up and a smirk going halfway up one cheek - and she started laughing too. For a second, you completely forgot why you’d brought her here in the first place.

When the two of you stopped laughing, you sank into your respective chairs, the room quiet but for the partying outside. The couch beneath you was soft, and your body felt like it was melting into the fabric; you were drifting into sleep before Maureen broke the silence.

“Lu-cre-tia,” she said in a low, sing-song voice.

“Mm.”

“I have a very, _very_ important question for you.”

You opened one eye and glanced over at her so she’d know you were listening. She was staring at you, hands folded over each other on the arm rest, her chin perched on top of her knuckles.

“You have any wine? My mouth is… a _desert_.”

Your eye slipped closed and a smile spread across your face. “You bet I do.”

You insisted that Maureen stay in the little boat she’d made out of her two armchairs while you fetched a bottle from your office. As you unlocked the door (taking, you were sure, an absolutely goofy amount of time to do so) and stepped into your office, thinking about what varietal would most impress her, you came face to face with your portrait. Her gray eyes stared, solemnly, down at you, seeming to shame, to reprimand, to chastise. The weight of the vial returned to you instantly, threatened to pull you to your knees on the ground. _You had a plan_ , your portrait’s eyes said. Get the wine, slip in the ichor, inoculate Maureen, try to get her to understand. And surely she would - Maureen was patient, Maureen was kind, Maureen would understand. Surely. She believed in the Bureau, she believed in the mission, she believed in _you._ You took several steadying breaths and steeled yourself - as much as you possibly could in your state - then grabbed a bottle of your favorite red and headed back to the lounge.

When you got back, Maureen was sitting up in her chair, and she clapped when she saw you. “Yes! Excellent! I -” she stopped, eyes flitting between your hands and your face. “Cups,” she said.

You stared at her for a solid fifteen seconds in silence before you understood. “Oh, god damn it,” you said.

Maureen grinned and curled her legs in, patting the seat of the armchair she’d been resting her feet on. “We’ll share. Out of the bottle. Like I did in university.”

You handed her the bottle as you hiked up your robes and clambered over the armrests and settled into the chair. Maureen had pulled a corkscrew from the leather pouch she’d gotten the brownies from and the two of you cheered  when the cork popped out. Still, though. The task ahead of you lingered over your head like a stormcloud.

The two of you passed the bottle between you, taking big mouthfuls, your fingers brushing and clunking together during your weed-clumsy hand offs. You weren’t nearly as relaxed as Maureen seemed to be - your mind was in constant, panicking motion. _So preoccupied with the vial that I forgot the cups. But without the cups I can’t inoculate her with the ichor. Damn you, Lucretia. It’s all in smoke now._ You fingered the vial in your pocket as Maureen took a huge gulp from the bottle and handed it over. You took another slug and tried to discretely unstop the ichor while it was still in your pocket, one-handed. This proved tough, if not impossible, and before you could even work the cork out Maureen impatiently snatched the wine from your hands.

“Don’t hog it!” she scolded, giggling. You smiled weakly back at her, pulling your shaking hand from your pocket. _Ah, well._ You could, you supposed, finish off the easier of two evils first.

“Maureen. There is… a reason I brought you here. Away from the party.”

She took a gulp from the bottle and cocked her head to one side. “Mmm?” she said, cheeks bulging with wine.

“I… have something to tell you. Of great importance. About… me.”

She went still for a second, staring down at her feet, pressed together in front of her. Then she nodded once and handed you the bottle.

You took another nervous gulp and continued. “I… am not the woman you think I am. There’s a lot about me - about my past that you don’t know. And I can’t - it doesn’t feel right to continue on this way. With you not knowing.”

She nodded again and reached for the bottle. You could feel all the things you wanted to say to her, the story of your impossible century, clambering over your tongue and battering against your teeth:   _I’m not from here. I’m distant, I’m over one hundred and twenty years old, I’ve hurt people here, I hurt my friends, this organization that we built from the ground to the sky is based on lies and cowardice, and I know that I’m right but each day it’s terrible to wake up and remember what I’ve done, what we had to do to survive, all the people I’ve seen_ die _-_

“Maureen… I was a lot younger before you met me.”

Her head jerks up and she snorts. “So was I! You don’t have to be a scientist to know that.”

You shake your head at her, feeling a little dizzy. “No. I was a lot younger quite sooner than that.”

Her nose wrinkled. “What?”

“Six months before you met me, I was twenty-two years old.”

Her face froze for a second - just one - and then immediately collapsed into a frown. “No. That’s… not possible. You’re… you’re forty years old, Lucretia.”

You swallowed, your throat a knot of anxiety. “Before we met, I found a relic. But… I didn’t bring it back.”

Maureen took another enormous gulp of wine, and before you could back out, you pounced on her silence and dove in.

For the next hour - until the light outside shrank until the only visible light was the booths on the quad and the torches in the lounge - you told her your story. You told her about your quest for the relics, which she already knew about, and how you’d discovered the Animus Bell, which she hadn’t. You told her about Cam, about your trial, about leaving him behind, though you were so ashamed that in that moment your throat clenched so hard you could barely speak above a whisper. And you told her how, when you emerged from the Felicity Wilds, aching, bruised, and bleeding, you’d been twenty years older.

When you looked back up at her she looks - sad. Hurt. Upset. But… not _at_ you, as you’d sort of been expecting. She seemed to pity you, somehow. _That might be worse._

“Lucretia, I’m… so sorry,” she said, reaching over to squeeze your hand. “That must have been terrible.”

“It… wasn’t great,” you admitted, trying to ignore how your heart pounded at her touch. “But, if nothing else, I gained wisdom from it all. Patience, consideration, thought before action. Humility, certainly.”

She smiled sadly. “I’m sure.” She sat back against the armchair, pulling her hand from yours. If having her touch you was torture, having her withdraw was unbearable. Your chest throbbed. “I can’t imagine. Did -?” She stopped herself and blushed. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. I’m sure I wouldn’t want to.”

You shook your head, as fiercely as your intoxication would allow you. “No, please. You’ve always been open and honest with me. I’d like a chance to do the same with you. Ask away.”

“Does it bother you? I mean - oh. Of course it must. What a silly question,” she said, laughing a little self-consciously.

“It’s not silly. It’s not at all. Please.”

Maureen pressed her lips together and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, the way she did when she was trying to collect her thoughts; she’d always been beautifully expressive. “I know that it must be hard as far as your mortality goes,” she said slowly, attempting to phrase her question correctly. “But… the other things. About being older.”

Your chest ached at that fiercely, but you merely smiled and rested your chin on one hand, head tilted to one side. “My face, you mean? My looks?”

She opened her mouth to speak but closed it, biting her lip. _She’s worried she’s offended me._ “You’re a remarkable looking woman,” she said quietly. “But… yes. That is what I meant.”

You hummed a little and leaned back in your chair. “I’ve never been particularly concerned about them,” you said, and paused. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it now every once in awhile. Not out of vanity, just…”

You let your voice trail off and looked over at her to find Maureen smiling, bittersweet. “Just sad,” she said. You nodded. She leaned back in her chair, nodding back, and clasped her hands in her lap. “I don’t know how you did it.”

You glanced at her, surprised, and she continued. “I wouldn’t have - I _couldn’t_ have done what you did.” She sat up and leaned forward to clasp your hands in hers, looking directly into your eyes. “You are the strongest person I have ever met, without parallel,” she said, squeezing your fingers. “And I mean that wholeheartedly.” Her eyes bore into yours, trying to impress upon you her sincerity.

A lump rose in your throat and it was all you could do to keep your face straight. _God - whatever god is listening - don’t let her notice how red I must be._ You swallowed and smiled at her, only a little shakily. “I can tell,” you said and slipped your fingers out from under and on top of hers, patting her hands. “I think you’re drunk.”

Maureen blinked once, slowly, then tilted her head back and laughed. “Oh, absolutely. God.”

You smiled, though at the sound of her laugh the lump in your throat had returned. “I should have waited. This…” you chuckled and put your head in your hands. “We both should have been sober. What a thing to put on you. I’m so sorry.”

“No, no! I’m fine, honestly! I -” You felt two hands on yours - in yours - _through_ yours and she’s tugging at your cheeks, pulling your eyes up to hers. “Lucretia, I'm fine. Really.” She smiled, and your heart clunked, heavily, just once. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

_Yes,_ you thought. The vial sat heavy in your pocket, pressing heavy against your thigh. _It's my fault. All of it. All of it._ The words were on the tip of your tongue. Hiding just behind your teeth. _I'm not who you think I am. I've done monstrous things._ You're about to tell her, really. About to hand her the ichor and implore her to drink.

“Would you like to see her?” _Close enough._

Maureen blinked. “Her?”

“Me,” you told her. “Me, from before Wonderland. The portrait in my office -”

“Yes,” Maureen said, taking both of your hands in hers, sending a great tingling rush to your head. “Unequivocally, yes.”

\--

The two of you, still stumbling a little when you walk, arrive at your office having only bumped your elbows and shins about four times each. You’re grateful for it: if you’re messed up enough to not have total control of your motor functions, Maureen could write off your trembling as effort from holding yourself steady rather than your sweaty-palmed reaction to her holding your elbow for support. Sweaty-palmed wasn’t a figure of speech, either. The keys to your office nearly slipped through your hands several times before you finally managed to get your door open.

“There,” you said, shutting the door behind Maureen and gesturing to the portrait. “That’s the one.” You took your staff from where you’d left it earlier, leaned against the bookshelf, and the familiar feel of the wood sent a chill of guilt down your arm.

Maureen squinted up at the portrait, lips pursed, the way she always did on the rare occasion she was stumped by something. “This is the same portrait that’s always been here,” she said, turning back to you. “It looks just like -” Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut, her mouth forming a little “O” as she realized. “This… is a magic thing, isn’t it?”

You smiled fondly, striding past her to lean against the edge of your desk, one hand on your office chair’s cushioned back, steadying you.  Maureen followed, circling the other side to lean against the other corner. “Yes, it’s a magic thing,” you said. “I don’t tell a lot of people about what I… went through, let’s say.”

Maureen’s mouth tightened into an anxious, sad smile and she reached over and squeezed your arm. You smiled back at her, equally nervous, and stamped your staff on the floor. You felt the pulse of its magic flood from you, glide up the portrait’s surface, changing the paint as it went. Maureen shot you a curious look, surprised at the sound, and then she looked up at your portrait, which now displayed the image of a younger version of yourself. One you barely recognized, now. Maureen let out a quiet gasp.

“Oh,” she said breathlessly. She reached a hand out as if to touch the painting’s cheeks and stared up at its eyes in wonder.. “I - Lucretia, I hope this isn't too forward, but... you were a marvel.”

You laughed, a little harsher than you intended, and leaned your staff against your desk. “That’s kind of you,” you said. “I never had occasion to notice until -” and there you’d had to stop, because the rest of the sentence was completely and utterly too painful, and for a reason you can’t bring yourself to admit to her.

Maureen reached over and squeezed your shoulder, biting her lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”  
“No, no,” you said, waving her apology away. “You’re fine. I...” you trailed off, chuckling, and looked over at her. “I’ve never had occasion to care before, I suppose is what I mean. No one has ever -” You paused, gazing up at the younger version of yourself for a moment. “No one called me anything like that back then. And no one since has seen her.”  
“You,” Maureen said. “Not ‘her’. That’s still you up there.”

“Yes,” you said, not really believing her. “I suppose it is.”

The two of you had stood in silence, gazing up at your younger self, for some time. Outside, in the massive courtyard, you could hear fireworks and music and yelling. The last time the girl in the portrait had been around for a solstice, she’d spent it wine-drunk in her study after a long day of scouring for information regarding your relics and passed out, exhausted, before the eclipse. A month later, she’d gone into Wonderland, and she hadn’t come back out. You wondered what the Bureau would be like if she had; would your employees still respect you? Would you have made it this far, or would her impatience have made administrative duties all but impossible? Would Maureen -? Your heart thumped, hard, and you gritted your teeth against the shame of the thought. _Ridiculous._ _You’re_ ridiculous _, Lucretia._

“I wish you’d known me then,” you said suddenly, breaking the silence and raising your hand to rest on the frame of the portrait. “I wish you could have - seen me, known me. Before I looked like… this _._ ” To your shame, your throat closed and tears stung your eyes. You turned away from her then, staring down at the floor as you attempted to control - what? It was impossible to describe, even as you were being rocked by the sheer force of the feelings - the injustice of it all, the sense of missing out on something that had never been yours in the first place, the overwhelming rush of _wants_ for the woman beside you. Wanting to protect her. Wanting to build a new world with her. Wanting to know, perfectly, each thought in her head. Wanting to be close to her. Wanting to run your hands through her hair. Wanting to - well. _Do Things._ All of this and more, each desire breaking down within itself to as intricate and precise a scenario as your mind would follow, and one was felt more crushingly and demandingly than the others. You wanted, so _badly_ , for her to want those things from you. Your grip on the frame tightened. You had always been good at compartmentalizing; there wasn’t a box anywhere that this would fit in. It was infuriating.

Maureen’s hand, smooth and soft, covered yours and tugged it, gently, down from the frame. You wouldn’t look at her - couldn’t, because you were in no state, your face would immediately reveal everything, _everything_ \- but you let her hand guide yours. She held onto your hand and moved into your peripheral vision, tugging again and again at you. When you refused to look at her she reached up and held your chin between her thumb and forefinger and tugged, firmly. Finally you acquiesced and your eyes met and - _she knows._

You could tell from her eyes, the quirk of her mouth, the color of her cheeks; more specifically from how they changed when you’d finally turned to look at her. She had been smiling a little, on the cusp of chuckling at your foolishness, maybe, but what was written on your face killed the laughter before it could bubble from her throat. Her entire face dropped, shocked, when she looked at you.

“I'm sorry,” you said, voice barely above a whisper. Impossibly, you laughed - it was ridiculous, really. You'd ended up telling Maureen not one but _two_ of your most closely kept secrets. One without even speaking, not even the one you’d most meant to tell her.   _She was right.  I_ am _a marvel._ You cleared your throat and squared your shoulders, and when you spoke next, it was the Director speaking, clear and strong, not Lucretia, she of the weak knees and heavy tongue. “This was a mistake. I apologize. You should g -”

She was shaking her head at you before the first sentence was done, and before you could finish telling her to _go home, go back to the lab,_ she reached up with trembling hands to pull your face down to hers. Your mouths met as you were in the middle of _go_ and your lips were puckered awkwardly; your brain took several beats to catch up to the situation at hand and (to your later embarrassment) you sat and let her kiss you for ten seconds, frozen in place. Ten seconds exactly, and no more. There wasn’t a damn thing - not on Faerun or above, not the gods, not the relics, not the Hunger itself - that could have kept you from kissing Maureen Miller. Not anymore.

You knew that she’d smelled good before the kiss: her anise-and-lavender aura was inescapable and intoxicating every time you were around her. Now, it was nearly overpowering in the best way possible. One hand moved to cup her shoulder and the other tangled in the hair at the base of her neck. You could feel so _much_ of her: her heartbeat and her breath and her hands on your face and the length of her body pressed up against yours.

When you pulled away from each other, Maureen’s hair was frizzed up and her glasses were knocked askew. Chances were you didn't look much better. Outside, the whoops of the other Bureau members were growing louder and louder as the eclipse approached, which surprised you; for a while the pounding of your heart in your ears and your ragged breathing had muted the party entirely.

“The eclipse is soon,” Maureen whispered, her forehead still pressed against yours.

“Yes,” you replied. “Probably any second now.”

“We should go out, be with everyone else.”

Your heart sank. You'd been hoping that, through some miracle, the two of you would never have to leave the room again. “Right. That would be...responsible.”

“Mmm.” Maureen nuzzled her nose against your cheek and sighed, twirling a strand of your hair around one finger. “Counterpoint: I'm still high. And drunk.”

You laughed, quiet and breathy. You couldn't seem to stop whispering. Anything louder had the potential to break whatever magic had created this moment. “So am I.”

“Well. It would hardly do for your employees to see the Director and her scientific advisor in such a state.” Maureen pulled back and tilted her head to one side, smiling slyly. “It’d probably be for the best if we spent the eclipse in here. For our reputations.”

A strange roaring filled your head, as if you were inside a seashell, and you could tell - both by the fierce tingling in your cheeks and Maureen’s giggling- that you were blushing intensely. You swallowed and whispered, “That… sounds like a good idea,” with as much composure as you could muster.

Maureen smiled up at you, eyes half-lidded, and the two of you leaned forward in sync, eyes closing -

Outside, your drunken employees cheered as the eclipse began, plunging the two of you into darkness. That was okay. You didn’t need to see to find your way back to her lips.

\--

Later, after everything outside had been quiet for some time, when the stalls had been packed up and the revelers had staggered back to their beds, the two of you remained curled around each other on the floor of your office in a nest of cushions and blankets. You hadn’t _done_ anything - you wouldn’t. Not like this. You’d just kissed. And kissed and kissed and kissed. Until the world fell away and it was so natural that stopping to breathe or shift positions or just look at her felt foreign to you. Kissing, unfortunately, was also tiring; it was incredibly late and the two of you finally settled into each other, dozing, your head in the crook of her neck and her face pressed into your hair.

“Lucretia,” she whispered.

“Mm.”

“Thank you. For telling me about your past. And… well. For the kissing, also.” She laughed a little, nuzzling into your scalp. “Tonight has meant so much to me. You have no idea.”

Your throat closed slightly, and you pressed your face tighter against her neck, breathed her in. “I feel the same way,” you whispered.

“You can tell me anything, Lucretia,” she murmured into your hair. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep things from me. I’m here for you, and I’m here for the Bureau too.” She nudged you playfully. “You don’t have any more secrets hiding in that brain of yours, do you?”

You smiled, guilty. The hand you laid on was in your pocket, the vial of ichor pressed into your palm. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

She laughed and kissed your forehead, then your hair, then your cheeks, eventually just peppering your face in quick pecks that made you dizzy. _Tomorrow,_ you thought, pulling your hand out of your pocket and cradling her head in your arms. _I’ll tell her tomorrow. For good, this time._

\--

_You never did end up telling her. It had never felt like the right time: after all, there would always be more days, more hours, more minutes. Maureen died not knowing who you really were, and you remained a liar. Lucas, on your last visit to the lab (to collect some of your things from Maureen’s room, a task that all but destroyed you), had just stared, sullenly, before coolly telling you he’d no longer be making trips to the base. He still did, of course - he’d just stopped getting permission. You’d see him wandering, frowning at things, arguing with official Bureau members. You simply pretended not to notice, and the quality of your life improved considerably. He’d always been suspicious of you and your ship and your strange fish and your big plans, didn’t like your “reliance” on magic. Whatever was fundamentally trusting and good in Maureen hadn’t been passed down to him. At the time, you’d taken it in stride. You could lie and lie well at this point. You knew that you could have told him off, rattled off some anecdote, finished with something blunt and pointed like Lup or Taako might have said, zero in on him and make him feel it. You also knew nothing would come of it; you were lying and he knew it. He didn’t have to say it for the fact of it to sit with you, heavy as a boulder. When you got back to the base, you poured the vial of ichor - the one you’d kept since the day of the eclipse, just in case you’d needed it - back into Junior’s tank and listened to him chirp._

_“Lucas had no right to act so superior,” you told him the day Lucas had “died”.  After all, you’d done what you did all those years ago to save your friends, to save the world and all other planes still in existence. Junior chirped, sadly. “You believe me,” you said, one palm pressed against the tank. “I’m not a bad person.”_

_You were a very good liar by that point. Lying to yourself felt as natural as lying to anyone else._

 

**Author's Note:**

> -poses-  
> I want to clarify, now that we're done, that I don't think Lucretia is a bad person. Far from it: she's my absolute favorite character. I think, though, that she battled with a lot of doubt and self-loathing in those years when she was trying (and failing) to get back the relics and work on her spell. Even though she knew what she was doing was right, I think the guilt and the pain of it weighed on her terribly and even though - just like the first one! - I started this thinking it would be happy and fun that mindset ended up coming through and now it's. This.  
> ANYWAY... participate in Lucretia Week. She's earned it. [lucretiaweek.tumblr.com]


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